Lee Goldberg

The Jewless Jew

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My flight to New York was filled with orthodox Jews with the beards, the yamulkes, the hats, the whole deal. If we’d had a horse-drawn cart,  some milk and some cheese we could have staged the opening musical number from FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. 

Midway through the flight, I got up to stretch my legs and use the restroom. When I got out, I bumped into this young boy, maybe 12 years old, who looked at me and asked:

"Are you Jewish?"

"Yes," I replied.

He immediately ran back down the aisle to his father, who stood up, offered me his hand, and then started talking to me in Hebrew. Or at least I think it was Hebrew.

"I’m sorry, I don’t speak Hebrew," I said. "I’m not a practicing Jew."

"But you’re Jewish," he said.

"Yes, I am," I said. "Have a good trip."

I started down the aisle, but he wouldn’t let me pass. He said something else to me in Hebrew.

"I have no idea what you’re saying," I said. "I am a very Jewless Jew."

"Did you have a Bar Mitzvah?"

"Nope," I said. "And I don’t celebrate passover. And I had bacon for breakfast yesterday. I’m watching my carbs."

"Where are you sitting?" he asked.

"Up there,"  I said, gesturing to the front of the plane. And as he turned to look, I used the opportunity to slip past him and return to my seat. 

I settled in, and was starting to watch 30 ROCK on my iPod, when the guy, his kid, and a bearded man in a long, black coat showed up at my seat.

"This is our Rabbi," the guy said.

The Rabbi introduced himself, asked me my name, and the next thing I knew, they stuck a yamulke  on my head and started chanting something in Hebrew.

I began to protest, but then the kid started wrapping my arm with some kind of leather strap and I figured I’d just let them do their thing.  The guy put a card, written in Hebrew in front of me, and told me to repeat after him. I did, if only to get the whole awkward scene over with.

The people sitting next to me looked like they wanted to crawl under their seat and hide. I would have liked to join them but the Jewish kid had me lassooed pretty good.

The three Jews finished up, congratulated me on this very special day in my life, slipped a card in my hand and returned to their seats. The card had a photograph of a rabbi on the front and on the back there were illustrations of the steps  in something called the Mitzvah Campaign. I’m not sure, but judging by the drawing, I think one of the steps, Tefillin, had something to do with what they did to me.  You tell me. What was all that about?

To The Big Apple

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I’ll probably be scarce here over the next few days. I am leaving for New York on Thursday morning to attend the first Mystery Writers of America board meeting for the new year and my annual get-together with my publisher, editor and agent.

I’ll also be doing a booksigning on Friday night, 6-8 pm, at
Partners & Crime. If you happen to be in NY, stop by and say hello.

I’m back on Sunday…and then I have jury duty starting on Tuesday. But with the strike going on, it’s not like jury duty is going to cut deep into my work.

Tod in the Times

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My brother Tod’s review of two new novels set in Las Vegas, both by first-time authors, appears on the front page of today’s Los Angeles Times Calendar section.

What "Beautiful Children" and "The Delivery Man" share — apart from
the obvious thematic portrayal of Las Vegas as "Caligula" — is,
surprisingly, hope. Both Bock and McGinniss flash across the page with
firm style, compelling voices and the desire to go deeper than their
subject matter. Although neither of their novels has defined literary
Las Vegas, both carry the imprint of burgeoning talent, and that is
always worth gambling on.

The Mail I Get

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I received this email today from a complete stranger. It’s a good example of how NOT to sell a book. 

Please order my book XYZ at http://www.publishamerica.com
and tell all your friends about it to. I have attached a release letter for you
so you can read what it is about. Please order it and then tell all your reader
friends so they can order it too. Maybe then I can become on my way to wealth.
Thank you for your time.

By "release letter," she means a press release from PublishAmerica that  contains an incoherent, one-paragraph summary of the book’s plot and some lies about the company being a "traditional publisher." I’m trying to imagine how anyone could think that this pitch would sell any books.

Another Get-Rich-Quick Scammer

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You  know how much I love Lori Prokop and her laughable array of get-rich-quick schemes. Well, my brother Tod has found Lori’s dastardly male counterpart in Nick Daws, another self-proclaimed
"bestselling author"  of books you never heard of and can’t find in any bookstore. Daws’ "Quick Cash Writing Course" is the funniest author scam since Lori’s "Book Millionaire" debacle. But, as Tod writes:

There’s nothing funny about the desperation writers feel — spend even
a few hours in a workshop and you’ll see it in Technicolor — and as a
professor part of what I preach is that this isn’t easy. There’s no
back door. The only way to succeed is by doing, by handling rejection,
by improving. If you’re looking for Quick Cash, maybe make up a course
like the "bestselling" Nick Daws has, because desperate, foolish
writers will pay you for your precious secrets.

The Mail I Get

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I received a lengthy email today from a woman in her 50s. It read, in part:

Who are the publishers that PAY “unknowns”
for their work?  How do I contact them? I’m an unknown author, writing a book about tragedy, near death experiences, and years of living with pain and how I learned to cope with
it all; and how God miraculously healed me of a debilitating, incurable disease.
My book is ready to be published. I worked with a literary agent (author coach)
for about three years. He got me a contract with Axiom Press, a subsidiary of
Evergreen Press.  But their cost to publish and market my book was between
$3,800 & $6,500 (depending on what services I chose).  I’m not
rich, do not have a big savings account and can not afford this!

[…]isn’t the biggest part of the money paid to the
publisher for marketing purposes?   That’s the way it seems to
me.[…]if I use a
POD and have to pay for all the marketing, etc.  Isn’t that going to
cost me in the long run, much more time and money that going through someone
like Tate? And who will set up my book signings?

Here’s what I told her: Every publisher buys books from unknown authors every day. You contact them through an agent. If they like your book, they offer you an advance against royalties. Your agent gets 10-15% of that advance, you get the rest. And if you earn your advance back in sales, you will get a royalty from every book that’s sold. You don’t advance the agent, or the publisher, a dime. That’s how publishing works.

An agent, or "author coach," who sets you up with someone who wants to charge you to publish your book is either a fool or a fraud. Either way, it’s a mistake to be in business with him, he doesn’t know what he is doing. 

The money you pay a vanity press isn’t going into marketing. It’s going into their car lease, their house payment, and their kid’s braces. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Tate or Jones Harvest or anybody else. They are all taking advantage of your desperation, gullibility and ignorance. 

But if you are hell-bent on paying to be published, save your money and go with iUniverse or Lulu. You’ll get the same "services" for a lot less.

The fact is that no vanity press is going to do any useful marketing for you — they will just empty your savings account (and that includes iUniverse). No newspapers or magazines are interested in reviewing any books from vanity press publishers. Nobody at a vanity press is going to set up any meaningful booksignings for you, either, because bookstores don’t want to host events for vanity press authors. Why? Because the vast majority of vanity press books are ugly, horrendous crap.

It’s cheaper, and more productive, to approach the bookstores on your own…something even professional authors do (and no one does it better than my friend author Joe Konrath).  Most of the successful authors I know have worked hard to establish strong, PERSONAL relationships with booksellers.

So, fire your useless fraud of an agent/coach and if you are going to self-publish,  go with iUniverse or Lulu and avoid any of their marketing packages.

UPDATE 12/29/07:  I heard back from the woman.

No, I do not want to PAY for publishing my
book.  I’ve always been under the impression that a reputable place
pays YOU for your work…but I was given a bunch of mis-information that
they don’t do that these days.  (That’s just the way it is,
and if you get it published you’ll have to pay a publisher because you
are an “unknown”. ) I’m so glad I came upon your web
site before I sent it to someone like Tate! Thanks again – for saving me from a
horrible mistake!

A Victory Against Vanity Press Scammers

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Writers Beware reports the very good news that vanity press scammer Airleaf Publishing, aka Bookman Marketing, was shut down on Dec. 19th, thanks to the aggressive efforts of a group of 275 defrauded authors. Their fight isn’t over — the authors are seeking criminal prosecution against Airleaf founder Carl Lau. 

But what about Airleaf execs/defenders Brien Jones and Krystal Hatfield? How culpable were they in the alleged fraud?

I don’t know what happened to Hatfield but Jones, who worked at Bookman for four years,  is still out there, only now he’s operating as Jones Harvest Publishing.

Jhlogo2
For the outrageous sum of $1750, he will produce your book in POD format…and maybe even feature you among his "Author Celebrity Associates." The first thing you’ll notice about the those Author Celebrity Associates is that 99% of them are elderly, which makes me wonder if Jones is trolling old folks homes for suckers these days instead of the iUniverse book catalog.

He’s also making the same pitch that  he did at Airleaf:

Not only do we publish every kind of book, more
importantly we sell those new books to bookstores. In addition, we
promote our authors books by contacting newspapers, radio and
television stations.
Most exciting of all, we pitch our client’s books in Hollywood, CA to
producers and directors.

At Airleaf, those claims turned out to be false. The closest Airleaf got to Hollywood was reportedly a trip to the Universal Studios Tour. 

Jones’ idea of "pitching" his clients to Hollywood is to attend The Great American Pitchfest with some of his suckers.  It’s not like Jones is opening any doors with his stellar Bookman reputation… Pitchfest is open to the public. Anyone can attend and pitch their ideas without having to pay Jones a penny.

If Jones keeps following the Airleaf/Bookman playbook, I”m sure we will be hearing more about him very soon.

(FYI: Jones is also doing business as authorcelebrity.com  , starredreview.com, greatconceptbooks.com, bookwheat.com      and authorprofile.com.)

UPDATE:  Poor, misunderstood Airleaf scammer Carl Lau blames his woes on Bonnie Kaye, who is the founder of Airleafvictims.com, and his former exec Brien Jones in a newspaper article published earlier this month.

Fannish Rights

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"We envision a future in which all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative and are accepted as a legitimate creative activity. We are proactive and innovative in protecting and defending our work from commercial exploitation and legal challenge. We preserve our fannish economy, values, and creative expression by protecting and nurturing our fellow fans, our work, our commentary, our history, and our identity while providing the broadest possible access to fannish activity for all fans."

That, my friends, is the mission statement of the Organization for Transformative Works, a new organization that hopes to legitimize fanfiction. I kid you not. When I first saw the site, I thought it was an elaborate practical joke, like amptp.com. But it isn’t. The movers and shakers behind this effort include Naomi Novik, a fanficcer turned acclaimed fantasy novelist, and Dr. Robin Reid, the Texas A&MUniversity professor best known for writing fiction about real people like Viggo Mortenson having sex with other male actors.

They steal the creative work of others and then have the balls to say they want to "defend their work from commercial exploitation."  Their hypocrisy is staggering…and apparently boundless. One of their "missions" is "establishing a legal defense project and forming alliances to defend fanworks from legal challenge." (I wonder if they will also form an alliance with the group that polices plagiarism of  fanfic by other fanficcers) Novik writes on author John Scalzi’s blog:

"We just want to enjoy our hobby and our communities, and to share our creative work, without the constant threat hanging overhead that an overzealous lawyer at some corporation will start sending out cease-and-desist notices, relying not on legal merit, but on the disproportionate weight of money on their side."

With that kind of reasoning, I’m surprised they haven’t recruited Lori Jareo to lead their organization. 

While their staggering hypocrisy might be lost on the majority of fanficcers, the foolhardy nature of this effort isn’t. For years, studios, publishers, authors and other rights holds have largely turned a blind eye to the blatant copyright infringement that is Fanfiction as long as fanficcers haven’t tried to profit from it. Or, as John Scalzi puts it:

"To the extent that fandom currently does what it does, it does it because of the benign neglect or tolerance of the copyright holders of the works the fans are working with.

Now many fanficcers seem justifiably concerned that the OTW’s efforts to claim ownership of their copyright-infringing works could end this fragile détente. Elfwreck writes on Scalzi’s blog:

"Sooner or later a copyright owner is going to issue a DMCA notice to a fan, a fan is going to run to OTW (or alternately, OTW will offer its services), and an expensive legal suit will be on and if the case is of sufficient profile, then other copyright owners, alerted to the existence of a group who says they can in fact no longer control their copyrights from people who claim to be fans, will start giving the fannish community quite a bit more attention, and probably not of the good kind…"

Scalzi envisions it happening like this:

"If and when a fan, told by, say, NBC Universal to take down her Battlestar Galactica fanfic, decides to make the legal argument that her work is transformative and fair use, […] and the fan shows up in court with the assistance of an umbrella group dedicated to the proposition that all fan work is legal and transformative, I suspect the era of benign neglect or tolerance of fan activity will be at a sudden and pronounced end. Because now the fans are saying, why, yes, this really does belong to us, and corporations who have invested millions in and can reap billions from their projects will quite naturally see this as a threat. From there it’s all DMCA notices and entire fan sites going down."

The OTW claims that "fannish work," an umbrella term for fanfiction and the "Real People Slash" that Dr. Reid gets off on and even such fetish fanfic as  "DUE SOUTH Masturbation" stories, is "transformative" rather than "derivative," that it is a unique and important expression of feminism, and therefore should be legally protected. John Scalzi observes:

"OTW’s claim, however, appears predicated on a fairly expansive idea of what "transformative" means under the law, and also that all fanwork is transformative, apparently by the mere nature of being fanwork. OTW is perfectly in its rights to make such a claim, but they are fairly significant claims, and I don’t imagine that OTW’s interpretation of the law would go unopposed if it were presented in a court of law."

[…]I suspect that a judge asked to consider a possibly infringing works’ "fannishness" as a relevant criterion for evaluation will toss that out early, chosing instead to look at what the law actually requires."

One fanficcer offered this comment on Scalzi’s blog:

"I’m not going to stop [writing fanfiction] either way, so I’d like to see the rules set on fandom’s terms, even if it is a segment of fandom that I and others don’t wholly agree with. There’s a risk in founding OTW at all, of course– it scares me to think of what unintended consequences might arise due to the whole thing. But there’s also a risk in sitting on one’s hands and doing nothing. If this history ends up being rewritten by victors that are not part of fandom, I’d at least like to know I didn’t stand still and do nothing while they were at it."

I want to see the day OTW legally challenges J.K. Rowling’s right to prevent people from disseminating stories about Snape and Voldemort gang-banging Harry Potter and Ron. Or the day the OTW fights for Robin Reid’s right to create and distribute stories about Sean Bean having sex withViggo Mortenson. Because when that day comes, instead of legitimizing fanfiction, they will kill it…not only in a court of law but in the court of public opinion.